j o e

The tragedy of many of today's rock bands is a tendency to believe their songs are oh-so-profound and deep as hell, overemoting the lyrics about how misunderstood they are with enough angst to trample an elephant...all with apparent obliviousness to how appallingly shallow their material really is. One of the things that appeals to me about Roxy Music is that they almost seemed to work in reverse. With many of their songs, the ones you pair up with pictures of Elvis-Ferry, bug-goggled Manzanera, and drag queen-Eno, it seems like they wanted above all to push this image of a fun, outrageous glam band building their ivory pedestals to fashion, romance, and the jet-set ideal, all with whatever quantity of catchy, simple rock hooks they could cram along the way. But beneath that extroverted, if not wholeheartedly shallow surface, within Ferry's words and vocal performance, there lay a profound ocean of human feeling, with emotions like emptiness, insecurity, and self-doubt paving the water bed. It is this tension, between superficial indulgence and internalization, which marks Roxy Music at their best. Stranded their third album, is loaded with it. I particularly love the way the songs frequently marry global, impressionistic, or third-person lyrics (at times so familiar sounding that they have the resonance of fortune cookie aphorisms) with introspective, often brooding, first-person dialogues.  In "Just Like You," a beautiful meditation on impermanence, Ferry shifts quite abruptly from the "Time conquers innocence, pride takes a fall" pronouncements to the more personal, gloomy "Hopelessly grounded, I walk throught the streets, remembering how we spent time..." The music subtly connects with the lyrics: Ferry's double-tracked octave-separated voice gives the illusion of an ‘inner' and ‘outer' voice, as if thinking the words and saying them out loud to himself at the same time. Then, it shifts back again to the detached "Fashion house ladies, need plenty loose change/When the latest creation is last year's fab rave..."  On "Amazona," Ferry initially puts on a thickly accented vocal, as humorous as it is sleazy — it reminds me quite a bit of the Christopher Walken character The Continental, from Saturday Night Live — singing "From Ama...zona...to El Do...rado...," only to have it slip abruptly into a sedated, broken-voiced "Hey, little girl, is something wrong? I know it's hard to carry on..."  On "Serenade," he zooms in from third-person verses painting a descriptive scene ("Darkness falls, 'round your windowpane"), to a first-person confessional conveying both resentment and longing ("Maybe I'm wrong for seeming, ungrateful, unforgiving...").  On "Psalm," he seemingly genuinely sings "Believe in me.." only to step back and qualify it with the more detached "...once seemed a good line." Finally, on perhaps the most obvious example, there's "Mother of Pearl." The first half of the song is dedicated to conveying a removed image of nightclub life, with harried vocals that rush into each other too quickly and lyrics like "What's your number?" dissolving into a morning-after disillusionment: "Then I step back thinking, of life's inner meaning and my latest...fling..." Just speaking of the lyrics in general, there are some eloquent, fantastic lines and images on this one, coupled with Ferry's unique brand of expression and delivery. He was always an excellent lyricist, and Stranded represents one of his peak efforts. Musically, the band really jumps out on this one, and this album also marks the other band members inching their way into the writing credits.  Although they had gotten rid of Brian Eno by this time in favor of whiz-kid Eddie Jobson, you can put me in the camp that says this was a decision for the better of both parties. I've never felt that Eno had all that much to do in Roxy Music, besides fiddling around with the VCS3 and looking the part of Eccentric Band Member #1. Jobson was without a doubt the more polished one for the keyboard role, and added another depth to the band with his electric violin skills (though these would be displayed more on subsequent albums than they are here). The band still had Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay to provide the left-of-center thrust needed to keep the songs from sounding too clean.  From the opening notes of "Street Life," you know you are going to get a good rock tune.  But from the concurrent dissonant strains of Mackay's saxophone in that opening, the hairs on your arm bristle a little bit, and you also know not to get too comfortable. And this continues on, from the gradual build-up of faux-gospel "Psalm," to the ridiculously over-the-top bombast of "A Song for Europe," to the gentle ache of "Sunset" that closes out the album. Stranded was one of the hardest of their early albums for me to get into, but out of all of them, it's provided the biggest pay-off in the long run. I still play it regularly and enjoy it each and every time, after all these many years. One of the peaks in a classic run of albums. review by Joe McGlinchey — 10-4-05 —

m a t t

At Bryan Ferry's request, Brian Eno left Roxy Music in 1973 to pursue a solo career ("Two non-musicians in a band is one too many," Ferry once quipped). The rest of the group didn't miss a beat; they added violinist/keyboardist Eddie Jobson (Curved Air) and quickly returned to the studio cut their third album. That album, Stranded, is considered by many fans and writers (as well as by Eno) to be Roxy Music's best record. I think it's very strong, but not significantly better than most of the other titles in the band's main sequence (the first five albums), which I think are all generally superlative. Stranded sounds a bit sleeker and more conventional than either For Your Pleasure or the debut album, but not tremendously so. The benefit of hindsight reveals that Eno's leaving didn't initially change the band's sound as much as might be expected. In fact, by leading off with the propulsive "Street Life," it sounds as if very little had changed at all. Although "Street Life" is basically the son of of "Editions of You," I find it to be even more catchy and appealing; it is, in my opinion, an absolutely great pop song. It also has a shrill eruption in the background of the chorus that one would normally attribute to Eno. What really makes the song, though, is Bryan Ferry's vocal performance. On Stranded, Ferry gained control over his unique voice and he really showed it off — almost every warble, croon, and enunciation was confidently executed and effective. "Just Like You" unveils the lusher, more professional sound of Roxy Music. It's beautifully layered, immaculately produced and Ferry's preening falsetto hasn't a hint of irony. "Amazona," the only song here on which Phil Manzanera shares writing credit, gets back to textural experimentation. As the band proved on "Street Life," they were still a somewhat eccentric bunch and remained both willing and able to play around with sound. Colored by the occasional laser-blast sound effect, the quirky, funky verses contrast well with Ferry's swooning decadance in the song's chorus. Then all hell breaks loose as the tempo speeds up and the listener is peppered with the laser blasts and harshly treated guitar sounds until the verses return. "Psalm" follows and it really breaks the playful mood — it's 8 minutes of a surprisingly sincere attempt by Ferry to do a gospel tune. I've listened hard for an ironic gesture in this song and have consistently come up lacking — which is probably why my opinion of it is that it's a nice idea that nevertheless goes on about twice as long as necessary. "Serenade" starts the second half of the album and it has that wall-of-sound texture and romantic whisk to it that numerous UK new wave bands of the 1980s used as the basis for their sound. This isn't my favorite side of Roxy Music, but they do it well and there is much to be said for originality. In the hands of virtually any other band, something like "Song for Europe" would flatline. In fact, I firmly believe that this song is singularly responsible for inspiring Jarvis Cocker to write a couple of interminable self-indulgent wallowings that mar two otherwise excellent Pulp albums. Roxy Music plays it so over the top, though, that I find it impossible to take seriously, even if that wasn't the intent (and with Eno gone, you can't set the default to "joke"). Thickly draped with an Old-World feel yet also evoking Phil Spector, the overwrought music suits Ferry's hysterical yearnings ("Though the world is my oyster/it's only a shell full of memories;" "These cities may change/but there always remains/my obsession;" "Through silken waters/my gondola glides/and the bridge — it sighs"). And this is while he plays it relatively close to the vest — when the music gets really melodramatic and Ferry starts emoting in Latin and then in French, you're left with no choice but to either hit the "skip" button or laugh out loud. I think "Mother Of Pearl" is one of Roxy Music's greatest songs, though it doesn't start that way — I'm not sure why the band chose to start one of the slickest, grooviest tunes they'd ever write with 80 seconds of unrelated proto-punk cacophany and I've never warmed to it. It passes quickly, though, and then you get over five minutes of coolness so pure that Bryan Ferry's decisions to rhyme "Zarathustra" with "loser" and "dilletante" with "fancy" actually add to the experience. The album ends with the wonderfully atmospheric "Sunset," a deeply stirring piece that achieves a greater spirituality than the more overt "Psalm." review by Matt P. — 9-15-05 —